IN HINDSIGHT   by an Indo-German newspaper columnist

(In Hindsight 44/Jul 20-25, 2010)

Paul the Octopus probably won the World Cup for Spain. Now he deserves better than (as his spokeswoman said) to “go into retirement and play with himself”–or did she say “with his handlers”, etc.? It’s all the same.

One of the biggest stars–or should I say starfish? No, he’s a mollusc–of the World Cup, who was once a mere Common Octopus, correctly predicted the results of eight consecutive matches including the final. The odds of this happening by mere chance are 255 to 1. Even if you discount the first few matches before worldwide attention and expectation were focused on him, the odds against him were still very high.

There have been various theories of bias, but there is also a simpler explanation: Paul was able to predict the results because, to an extent, he was causing them.

After a while even non-superstitious people began to suspect that the Oracle of Oberhausen was infallible. Paul, for a while, became the leader of a religion, and the whole world loved or feared him; as did some of the footballers. To quote Spain’s Sergio Busquets after the semi-finals, “We are in love with it.” Few could honestly say they wanted their god to fail, or wouldn’t bear his punishment under token protest. Atheists began practically praying that this cute cephalopod wouldn’t be proved wrong.

I have little doubt that the phenomenon had an effect on the performance of the players, and the behaviour of the crowd (and possibly even the match officials)–at least subconsciously–who were all mindful to the point of distraction. Players and their supporting soldiers had their spirits lifted or lowered, and it surely led to more than a few miskicks and mispasses, and so on. Before his semi-final Uruguay’s coach had said he wasn’t superstitious, and that “It’s not just a matter of beating Germany but also beating the octopus… and I think it is possible,” his choice of words giving away his misgivings.

So Paul proceeded, gaining strength with each prediction, or at least adding mussels. Huge crowds of people, including many who had initially accused the octopus of merely ‘thinking out of the box’, gathered in various countries for the mere privilege of seeing him open a container, and lamented or celebrated wildly (being unable to contain themselves) when he did so.

But no mollusc is immortal. Paul isn’t expected to live much longer: and his line will die out as he has no offspring. Who will succeed him to the throne? Could it be Harry the Australian crocodile who, before the final, struggled to chew up a chicken under a Spanish flag and whose owner predicted, “It’s going to be a close and aggressive game with a 1-0 result for Spain,” which turned out to be creepily correct?

The advantage of having a Croc Weathercock instead of an Octopus Oracle is that you can turn him into a wallet (or handbag, etc.) if you don’t like what he says. That’s worth more than seafood salad.

(In Hindsight 43/Jul 6-11, 2010)

Football is much more than a game. Some countries stake their national pride and honour on the sport (which tells you how little of it they must have to begin with).

The North Korean regime, fearing their team might get thrashed at the World Cup, decided not to play with matches and to refrain from televising any until and unless the team won (i.e. never). However, after their competitive 1-2 loss to Brazil, their leader (who sports a better hairstyle than Beckham’s) used his head, possibly for the first time in years, and resolved to show their match against Portugal in real time to his loyal subjects.

North Korea got buried 0-7 in that match. Now there are reports that the team will be sent to the coal mines as punishment. From collecting goals to collecting coals is a steep decline. But it’s still better than what happened in 1966 when, after their 3-5 loss to Portugal, the North Koreans were reportedly sent to labour camps.

Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, wanted to punish his luckless team by banning them from all international competition for two years. Still, that’s not as bad as being banished to the coal mines: and one hopes the poor North Koreans are let out before they start looking like the Nigerians.

The Italians weren’t expected to defend their title (although their country is shaped like a boot); yet after they got the boot, insults were hurled at the coach and players by some of their countrymen. Favourites Brazil had a goalkeeper named Júlio César (after Julius Caesar, in case you didn’t get it): however, after their exit wreaths weren’t placed on their heads, but rather their headstones. No, the last one’s an exaggeration–but failure at football is generally unacceptable anywhere (except in the United States, where they still have doubts about the game’s existence).

Well, even the labour camp incarceration of 1966 wasn’t as bad as the Football War fought three years later between Honduras and El Salvador, in which thousands of people died. Incidentally, El Salvador qualified for the 1970 World Cup; while Honduras made it to this year’s tournament without killing anyone, which is a sign of progress and gives us hope. These days there are few deaths–yet lots of football widows.

Why do people take football so seriously? Make no mistake about it: football is a substitute for war. As the most popular sport on a peaceful planet, it’s the one field where a nation can indisputably conquer the world. This is why the pressure at the quadrennial World Cup is so high; and only a handful of teams have ever won it; and it takes decades for a new team to win the trophy, playing with collective memory, gradually building their self-belief.

In a way the tournament has been almost an eighty-year world war that began in 1934: where old battles are never forgotten and thoughts of revenge lie in the heart for generations: where many get only a sole opportunity to eliminate or be eliminated: and the road is littered with the remains of poor marksmen who failed to take their chances.

Of course those flawed gods of the game, the referees, play no small part in this. Their decisions seem to favour the favourite teams, making it still more difficult for new champions to arise.

(In Hindsight 42/Jun 22-27, 2010)

People used to say the Afghan war was one of the few modern wars not being fought for oil–not least because we didn’t think the place had any of that disgusting stuff in the first place, nor much mineral wealth of any kind. But now we’re told (in a reported Pentagon report) that Afghanistan could be ‘the Saudi Arabia of lithium’. As if this weren’t bad enough, it’s being suggested that country may ALSO have hundreds of billions of dollars worth of oil and gas, among other buried treasure. Will we now see another urge to surge (or gush)? Will lithium-ion factories replace opium fields in the Golden Crescent, if not the Golden Triangle? Will the area be renamed the Lithium Trapezium? Will Saudi Arabia be reduced to the ‘Afghanistan of hijabs (with a bit of oil too)’?

Not quite. The fossil fuel reserves don’t compare and, according to a US mining association representative, “Sudan will host the Winter Olympics before these guys get a trillion dollars out of the ground.” In that case our only hope would be a big lithium spill along the lines of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But that would be ionic.

More than a fresh surge of foreign forces with lithium in the cranium, it’s beginning to seem there’s a real danger of the Taliban swarming back to power. Even the Afghan president, who was seen as one of their staunchest opponents and an advocate of modernity, has done an about-face and threatened to join the Taliban if he comes under further pressure (and if he takes the next logical step and starts wearing a niqab himself we might not even detect his about-faces and veiled threats in future).

For those who are mystified by this turn of events, please don’t forget that President Karzai is a politician. W.R. Hearst once burst out, “A politician will do anything to keep his job–even become a patriot!” (But then Mr. Hearst was a media magnate, and they’ll say anything to sell newspapers.) The Pashtun-dominated Taliban unrest, too, might arguably be redefined as an ethnic struggle to do a job on the Tajiks and other groups with unpronounceable names: whack the Wakhis, bash the Qizilbash, etc.

The Pakistani government, like the Afghans, is preparing for talks with the Taliban. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before even the US president decides to sport a headscarf. This would have no link with malicious pre-election rumours about his religion (it shouldn’t matter whether anyone is Muslim or Christian or worships Billy Idol) but, on the positive side, would help to hide his asinine ears.

Digging for lithium in the Afghan hills is as difficult as exploring what’s under an Afghan woman’s burqa–though at first you might not be turned on by what looks like a blue version of Monty Python’s Black Knight. The Afghan form of that garment renders a woman truly formless, so that her hills and valleys wouldn’t tempt you. It’s unlike in Iran where women often wear form-fitting chadors and exhibit strands of hair, or flash you a dangling earring. But if you get too excited then take some lithium for its traditional function as a mood stabilizer, because things are likely to go downhill in Afghanistan for a while.

(In Hindsight 41/Jun 8-13, 2010)

The world is a boring place these days. There just aren’t enough wars being fought.

The North Koreans finally did something exciting and torpedoed a South Korean ship last March. Last week, South Korean president Lee Myung-bak responded, “If the enemy continues to taunt us… they will have to suffer the consequences!”

The consequences, it seems, are another good sleep for the border guards.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates insisted on action: “For nothing to happen would be a very bad precedent!” Tell that to the president.

(Since then, nothing has happened.)

Mr. Gates has also conceded that “there’s not a lot you can do about it, to be quite frank, unless you’re willing at some point to use military force. And nobody wants to do that.”

Well, why didn’t he say so in the first place?

Worse yet, Mr. Lee has been telling investors, “There is absolutely no possibility of a full-scale war on the Korean peninsula. Don’t worry about a war: invest!” Is this the level to which politics has (been) sunk? He’s more interested in doing deals than patriotically slaughtering the enemy! Shameful!

At least, South Korea has OFFICIALLY REFERRED North Korea to the U.N. Security Council, which is the harshest thing it has done since the last war. Ooh! The U.N.! I’m sure those guys will fire at least a statement against North Korea.

Thus Mr. Lee continues his diplomatic dance. Is this Korean suffering from chorea? (If so, will he at least raise it to the level of severe chorea, also called Hemiballismus or ballism, in which people violently strike out with their limbs? Does he have the balls for it? Or will both Hemispheres remain inactive?)

Then again, Mr. Lee is more aggressive than his predecessors such as Nobel Peace Prize (or should it be renamed the Chicken Prize?) winner Kim Dae-jung; and has torpedoed the Sunshine Policy of greater contact with North Koreans: having effectively told them to put it where the sun doesn’t shine.

And remember, the two Koreas are still TECHNICALLY at war because they didn’t sign a peace treaty after 1953. But that’s little consolation.

Our hopes rest with the other leader, Kim Jong-il of North Korea, whom former EU Commissioner Chris Patten reportedly described, after a meeting, as being “mad as cheese”. Mr. Kim has allowed many of his countrymen–including soldiers–to starve to death, showing a rare even-handedness in treating friends and enemies equally.

While Mr. Lee denies the possibility of a war, Mr. Kim affirms it. Yet Mr. Lee too hardened his position after the naval incident, instead of just navel-gazing. What he did was to freeze trade (though he couldn’t freeze the water and save the ship) and, most aggressively of all, resume radio broadcasts into North Korea. Those starving northerners can now dance their cares away.

And there’s still a small chance that the two Koreas will do battle during the football World Cup, as both have qualified. (THIS is the kind of ballism I want to see!) However, North Korea has already scored an own goal by cleverly listing a striker as a goalkeeper, leading to his disqualification even before anyone’s balls were kicked. More wisely yet, Mr. Kim has said that only North Korean victories will be shown on TV to his people: which means that once again they’ll probably be kept in the dark.

(In Hindsight 40/May 25-30, 2010)

Scientists have now created life in the laboratory. Or have they? A number of people are venting their objections to that view of Dr. Craig Venter’s work.

Do we have, in Venter, an inventor of life? Or has he merely “replaced one of its motors”, as the Vatican put it? Venter admits, “We created a new cell. It’s alive. But we didn’t create life from scratch.” Basically his team scratched around for a bacterial cell and replaced its genome with a synthetic chromosome based on that of a different bacterial parasite (which seems to have got a taste of its own medicine!).

It’s the first known self-reproducing organism with no living ancestor. So it won’t be spending next Christmas with its family, but probably locked in a cold dark freezer in Maryland. I don’t even know if they keep any turkeys in there.

Thus it wasn’t an immaculate conception, or anything equally freaky. As mentioned above it was ‘born’ in Maryland, not of Mary. It came from the shell of another cell. The next challenge is said to be entirely recreating an organism out of non-biogenic molecules.

If it works, will we call it creation or idle recreation? Suppose that in the future, scientists produce an artificial man out of bits of other men, or even non-life chemicals: will he really be a man? Will he have a conscious mind, or be an unthinking robot powered by electrons shooting through his brain? Would there be any way to tell?

The sad truth, it seems, is that we are all machines anyway. Scientists have shown that our ‘conscious’ decisions begin at the level of individual neurons in the brain, more than half a second before we make (or become conscious of) those conscious choices. Moreover, there are periods when people ‘black out’ but still perform normal tasks as if they were consciously present.

If you have the time (and are enough of a nutcase), try this experiment: pass an electric current through the parietal cortex of a good friend’s brain (he’d have to be a very good friend to allow you to stick electrodes on him), and you could create what he’d believe were ‘conscious’ decisions in his mind.

This is treacherous territory. If a politician got hold of such knowledge, he might try to manipulate people to vote for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party of the UK, or the Beer Lovers’ Party of Russia; unless his own (professionally inactive) brain restrained him. If someone like Mariah Carey did, she might force us, against what we thought was our will, to sit through one of her concerts.

A more legitimate fear is that of bioterrorism. What if Bin Laden came up with a grim germ wearing a tiny turban and shouting ‘Death to all!’ before spewing noxious chemicals and possibly bad poetry?

Returning to the question of free will or lack thereof, there’s no need to feel depressed about it. In fact, you’d better hope you don’t have the kind of brain that’s programmed to get upset about being programmed. What’s the point of saying, “Dammit, my mind isn’t as free as I thought!” Better say, “What bloody difference does it make so long as I think I think!”

(In Hindsight 39/May 11-16, 2010)

In Thailand the Red Shirts and Yellow Shirts were facing off till this week. But I’ll bet you didn’t know the colour of their pants.

For those who haven’t heard of this conflict, it’s not a sporting encounter. The Red Shirts aren’t Manchester United FC but supporters of former Thai leader Thaksin Shinawatra. The Yellow Shirts aren’t the Samba Kings of Brazil (or Lance Armstrong) but detractors of the former: theirs is also the Thai king’s colour because he was born on a Monday which is represented by that hue. Meanwhile the hue and cry continued.

We’ll assume they are brave warriors who don’t get yellow pants when it’s time for battle. Actually there wasn’t much fighting but mainly mutual name-calling. The government did crack down on protestors blockading central Bangkok, though in a rather inept way whereby a soldier was apparently shot by his own men. Since then the present prime minister has offered elections and concessions. By the time you read this there might have been a peaceful dispersion; if not a friendly-fire version of Tiananmen; but if you’re a tourist then the worst thing is that the shopping district was affected (and massage parlours shut as well).

A number of other groups jumped in, including the White Shirts or ordinary Thais calling for peace, besides Muticoloured Shirts and Pink Shirts who opposed the Red Shirts, and were accused of being closet Yellow Shirts. There were also the Tomatoes, or policemen sympathetic to the Red Shirts, and Watermelons, or soldiers green on the outside but secretly red on the inside.

There were no Brown Shirts or Nazi storm troopers (otherwise the rest of the world might have got brown pants). Yet it’s slightly frightening when political people start wearing uniforms. Can’t they learn to live with each other? Can’t there be love between the Thais (pun unintended)? Otherwise instead of white shirts, will everyone end up wearing white robes like the KKK?

One robed Thai guy unthreatened by all this is King Bhumibol. Although he is said to have silently supported Thaksin’s ouster in 2006, both sides profess allegiance to him. Anyone who says a word against him might soon be wearing a prison shirt. The king has stated that criticism of his royal self should be permitted; but people are still being jailed for it.

That’s basically the way things work in countries which seem very free and democratic when people open their big mouths: in truth they’re only criticizing what they’re allowed to. Even when threatening to die (if not dye their shirts) for democracy, the Red Shirts praised the king. And it can happen in the most ‘liberal’ countries. In the Netherlands in 2007, a man was fined for, among other things, calling Queen Beatrix a nasty name.

We selectively criticize some nations, or religions, or rulers, or rock stars, because we’re allowed to. In fact, often the harshest criticism is reserved for leaders who favour liberty and democracy. Why is this so? I wonder if it stems from innate disgust at their not seizing more power as the critics surely would if they weren’t mere critics but could hurl the sword instead of the pen. They seem to be saying, “Fools! If you allow idiots like us to say what we want, we’ll make sure you regret it!”

(In Hindsight 38/Apr 20-25, 2010)

Last week the Chief Justice of India complained that people “only watch cricket during the nights without doing any work during daytime.” However, he concluded we must “let them go and watch cricket matches” because “we cannot do anything on this.”

Thus ended the dream of activist Subhash Dutta, who had been trying to get the court to intervene and reschedule night matches for the daytime, which might have prevented the country’s current energy shortage from getting worse. Well, he hasn’t entirely stopped dreaming: he says he will try again after the present CJI retires. By then, of course, the current crisis might degenerate into a no-current crisis; but that’s not my point.

Why are Indians so crazy about cricket? Partly because it’s one of the few spectator sports they’re good at. Could you imagine Sachin Tendulkar as a star player in the EPL instead of the IPL, darting up and down the field scoring goals? Pretty much impossible. Most Indians live closer to their heads than their legs: this is an advantage if you want to use you mind; but not to move your behind. In which other sports competition would feeble fogeys who retired years ago be among the top performers? When Kerry Packer invented floodlit cricket he said ‘Big boys play at night’ (nor must we forget that crickets tend to be noisy and nocturnal), but if the social butterflies are moth-eaten men then, under bright lights, they might get roasted.

Is sport, then, a waste of time? If you’re watching it rather than doing it, perhaps it is. Yet even then it can help the local economy, though the effect is small (and smaller still if no one works the next day). In any case, it’s no point hauling sportsmen or their supporters before a judge. As the chief beak shrieked, there’s not much we can do about it. In particular, don’t make a fool of yourself by going up to a tennis player and threatening to take him “to the court”!

While the energy crisis is a cause for concern, sports fans should also start thinking about their own low energy levels. Sitting stubbornly in front of a television set, or mulishly kicking off your shoes when others suggest a trip to the stadium, won’t help much. Well, actually making the supreme effort of travelling to the match venue won’t put joules in a mule either. You have to get your own ass moving, instead of trotting out red herrings. Otherwise you might end up like a fish out of water yourself.

If even a trip to the kitchen to fill your plate (or the bathroom to load the bowl) leaves you gasping for air, then the time to act is now. India was once reputedly a nation of starvation, but now obesity has reached epidemic proportions. In addition to this, South Asians are at greater risk of heart disease than any other regional population in the world. Mr. Dutta had argued in court that “this game of small ball can be played better in daylight”; but if things continue as they are then a greater worry might be the big balls that on close inspection turn out to be human couch potatoes.

(In Hindsight 37/Apr 6-11, 2010)

Formerly, when you said a lady was ‘da bomb’, it was intended as a compliment. That’s not how Moscow’s security chief meant it when he fingered two female suicide bombers for killing dozens in crowded metro carriages last week. Russians are saying nyet, not da, to bombs; and Putin has vowed to drag the plotters “out of the sewer”; but bombers will be bombers, and find new ways to hide bombs.

The latest is reportedly a plan by Al Qaida to use exploding breast and buttock implants. Even if security checks at stations and airports could be made foolproof, with full-body scans or passengers’ boobs and bums being intimately inspected, there are other crowded places where headline-grabbing attacks can be carried out.

And if you single out people of a specific origin or ethnicity for probing their privates, or try to keep them out of your country, eventually they’ll recruit from less suspected groups, as in the recent case of the blonde American woman involved in a European terror conspiracy. (Or did she just have a ‘blonde moment’ and forget which side she was on?)

There have been many ‘home-grown terrorists’ operating in their native lands and beyond, including Deadly Headley whose agents did a medley across the Arabian Sea to strike Mumbai. There will always be people whose idea of God is strikingly similar to others’ idea of the devil, desiring havoc and destruction. A democratic society can never be completely safe from lunacy and terror.

In recent years, self-proclaimed protectors of most religions have developed a soft spot for a hard line. A decade ago you wouldn’t have imagined people being forced to leave India for their art, as in the case of the unshod M.F. Hussain or the unveiled Taslima Nasreen, driven out by Hindu and Muslim extremists. (Actually I’m unsure if they were ‘driven’ or had to flee barefoot to the airport.) In Sri Lanka we’ve even had some Buddhist monks behaving more like monkeys, encouraging violence.

The chief culprits are religious and political leaders, who know they wouldn’t survive without their ‘enemies’ and, in effect, usually prescribe hatred in exchange for hatred. What do you observe at a ‘peace’ rally these days? You see demonstrators noisily expressing some form of hate for other people and other ways. Where a population can’t find enough enemies they split up like amoebae into mutually hateful groups: as in the USA, where modern politics tends to be about detesting either Democrats or Republicans; or Central America where a football game once precipitated a war; and so on. Let’s not forget that even Putin used his Chechnya campaign to gain power; and now needs a distraction from recent demonstrations held against his handling of the economy.

One possible solution to hatred and violence is education (which is why the Taliban are so busy blowing up schools). Perhaps it would also be useful to assume that a large-scale leader is a liar; fabricating, fabulating, often hatemongering to keep his position. Trust none of them. Don’t go to their frenzied rallies. Let them set out their agenda, and then vote from home if you can. If anyone lectures you on how you should embrace an ideology, don’t listen. Which also means that after you’ve finished reading this column, you should throw it away and forget about it.